We writers make lots of noise about how tough our business is, but it’s no harder, really, than being a nurse’s aid or running a successful restaurant or fruit stand. Anyone who sets out to do anything well and with integrity is in for a struggle. Add a dose of originality—to do things as no one has done them before—and you increase the struggle by an order of magnitude.

If we writers approach our task with the same masochistic zeal and determination with which the athlete sets her sights on the Olympic torch or the concert pianist practices his scales, at some level—at least at the level of the successful fruit stand operator—we can’t help but succeed. Perhaps not in droves, but people will buy our fruits and find them lovely, ripe, juicy. And they’ll come back for more.